


Just Like Old Times

by Princess of Geeks (Princess)



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Established Relationship, M/M, Missing Scene, The Shroud, season 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-15
Updated: 2010-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:38:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess/pseuds/Princess%20of%20Geeks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some missing scenes I imagined during the episode "The Shroud" that give insight into Jack and Daniel's relationship at this point in canon. Some dialogue taken directly from the script.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Like Old Times

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JD Junkie](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=JD+Junkie).



Daniel is a strange, larger-than-life figure, eerie in the shadows, as he sits in the big chair, all alone on the bridge of the Odyssey. Jack tries and fails to shake off the strangeness. This whole ... thing ... is way beyond weird, even for them. Mitchell had called it crazy. That was putting it mildly.

Jack quips, in answer to Daniel's non-apology for beaming Jack aboard, "You know, I was just thinking how much I missed being needed."

He saunters up to the comm officer's chair and seats himself. Daniel doesn't look like he minds Jack coming close. He doesn't look defensive at all. With his Amazing Prior Powers, of course, Jack supposes he doesn't feel even the slightest bit threatened.

"I've always needed you, Jack." Daniel's voice is distracted, as if he's listening to music no one else can hear, or reading some invisible tome while talking to Jack with only half his attention. Jack flashes back to midnight conversations that were more silence than speech, to hours spent watching Daniel's back on missions, and is suddenly weighted down by the invisible, unsaid words that are always hovering between them and filling the distance.

Before he can stop himself, he spits out, "Coulda fooled me." He's immediately pissed at himself for how petulant he sounds. Getting beamed up without warning has shaken him more than he wants to admit. He didn't expect that kind of thing any more, since Thor backed off doing it after the Replicator threat went away. Seeing Daniel like this has shaken him even further, though Jack's hiding that. Or trying to.

Daniel rounds on him. At least he's finally got the guy's full attention again. "Look, much as I'd love to take this opportunity to rehash all the in's and out's of our tumultuous and confusing affair, the equal of any soap opera, it's not the time or the place, you know?"

Jack opens his mouth, checking on his words before he lets them out. Yeah, he's gonna go there, he decides. And he's gonna enjoy it. He tilts his head. "Are all Priors this snippy? Because the last one we had any dealings with on Earth ended up taking his temper tantrum to new heights of spontaneous combustion. You folks building in a tendency to hissy fits with the scary makeup package or something?"

Priorized Daniel has kept his patronizing lecture voice. "No, Jack, I've always been perfectly willing to throw hissy fits all on my own, even before I became a Prior, as you never tire of telling me."

Jack shakes his head. "Yep, just like old times. Except I'm here against my will, and you look like Marcel Marceau."

"Yeah, you know, some things change, but others stay the same."

"Why'd you bother giving me the intel if you were going to bust out anyway?"

Daniel, tamping down his "venting mode", turns the chair toward Jack and faces him squarely. His voice goes from patronizing lecture back down to simple lecture. "Well, obviously I'm improvising at this point. I had no idea when or even if I was going to be able to overcome the effects of the anti-Prior device." Holy crap. Daniel was really going to talk. This all sounded so.... so Daniel. So real. "Time was running out. Adria's gonna notice my absence and become suspicious. So sending the rest of SG-1 to get the device was my only choice at the time."

"Then why do this now?"

"Because I'm afraid the rest of the team won't be able to complete the mission without me."

"Oh. Aren't we full of ourselves?"

"That, and I wasn't about to let Woolsey freeze me."

"That, I understand."

Daniel nods. Of course he knows Jack would get that part. "Yeah."

Jack watches him. He just looks downright spooky like this. It's a hard thing to see. Jack would rather look away, and let Daniel's familiar voice reassure him. But that's the wrong thing to do. "So how long until we rendezvous with the others?" Jack asks.

"I'm thinking three and a half hours in hyperspace. And that's pushing it."

"Cutting it pretty close, aren't you, Cinderella?"

"Yeah, and like I said earlier, whose fault is that?"

"Oh yes, blame me. Why should now be any different."

"Why indeed," Daniel says, and he does sound bitter. Despite claiming this was not the time, Jack would bet money that Daniel is brooding right now about their long-running soap opera, too. Daniel had brought it up first, for one thing. Sure, Jack had needled him, but Daniel had cracked first. Jack takes a fresh, petulant fleeting pride in that. Made ya do it! Made ya say it!

Jack muses aloud, "On the other hand, it's you and me, double-teaming Woolsey. I have no problem with that. In fact it's strangely satisfying."

Daniel says, softer, "You and me." And more with the bitter.

Jack observes cautiously, "I thought we weren't gonna rehash what's going on with us."

"Or not going on with us...." Daniel returns.

"In the middle of a very crazy scary mission. Besides, I really hate talking about" -- Jack waves a vague hand -- "that, in front of Merlin."

Daniel, resigned, his poise regained, is staring out at the flow of hyperspace again. "Oh, no worries. He's seen it all before."

"Not mine he hasn't. Yours maybe."

And the wince that crosses Daniel's face is pure horror -- there and quickly gone, but unobscured by the strange scarlike tattoos and the powdery white skin. Jack files that away for later. Because there is damn well going to be a later.

^^^^^

Later turns out to be a few quiet hours in the Odyssey's tiny sick bay, where Jack has dimmed the lights after badgering Daniel back into bed. Sam is flying the ship with Teal'c standing by. Mitchell and Vala are sleeping. They are hours from home, even in hyperspace. Daniel had been surprisingly willing to give in and lie down again, despite verbal protests that he was fine.

Jack sits in the half-dark next to the bed, brooding on how it had felt to watch the Ori ships streak through the newly open gate. Yeah, this one is definitely on him. There will be hell to pay. He'll have a hard time selling this one even to Hammond, who usually backs him up. Daniel had been right, after all, and his crazy plan had presumably worked, but as Mitchell had said -- any victory would be in the long run now, and the short run had just gotten a lot more depressing.

Jack scrubs his hands over his face.

Now he has to see the kids home safe, and go back to Washington and face the music. He'd rushed right to Colorado when SG-1 grabbed Daniel, and then bounced up to the Odyssey to see for himself that Daniel was actually back in one piece. He'd called Teal'c the lie-detector for determining whether Daniel was in control of himself or possessed by Merlin or had gone over to the enemy through brainwashing, but really, Teal'c had just been Jack's own backup, his own subjective verification system for Jack's instincts, which are fairly foolproof after a decade working with and loving this man. And they all probably know that by now. It was why no one batted an eye when he came to interrogate Daniel in person. Not that the entire program knows about his and Daniel's torrid affair -- at least he hopes they don't know, or that they don't choose to know. But everyone knows that Jack will drop everything for Daniel, and for Carter and Teal'c, too, as far as that goes. Naked favoritism. But somehow, no one really holds it against him. They were the first SG-1, after all. Saving the Earth fourteen separate times buys you some favors.

But he'd dropped everything and flown to Colorado the instant he'd heard Daniel was recaptured, and he has to admit, the waiting for news, this time, while Daniel was MIA, had been hard. Too hard. It had gone on so long, for one thing, the waiting for any word at all, any hint or scrap of intel about Daniel from behind enemy lines. Since the months of Daniel's first ascension, back in the days of the old team, Jack has harbored a secret and yet firmly held belief that if Daniel died again, he would know it. He would feel it. That belief has allowed him to keep a stiff upper lip through some pretty hairy abduction scenarios, on Earth and elsewhere, through the years. And his belief had not left him even when Daniel was off in Adria's clutches. Jack had been sure he was still alive.

But the waiting sucked.

Yeah, he'd taken the Washington job, put more distance between himself and Daniel after his first ill-advised promotion to base commander, made the best of a bad situation there. And he'd been incredibly relieved when Daniel had not, after all, taken off to Atlantis. He was prepared to like Vala for that reason alone -- that her screwball tactics, designed to reward only herself, had resulted in Daniel staying close by. Jack knows how to appreciate silver linings. They are rare.

Their present separation, and the issues in their relationship that it has created, are down to him. Jack cops to this. Daniel contributes his own issues, true, but Jack knows there is plenty of blame to go around when things get rough. They are off again, on again. It's hard. They fight alot. Sometimes the makeup sex makes it all better; sometimes they spend entire weekends biting down on their molars to keep from screaming and throwing things at each other. It's ridiculous. But they can't seem to stop. Or to let go.

Jack listens to the soft and occasional chirps of the monitors, watches the lulling green scroll of Daniel's steady heartbeat, and realizes that Daniel's capture by that Adria bitch is pretty much the last straw.

And Daniel is following his thoughts down that same strange path, lying there awake in the dimness, because out of nowhere he says, conversationally, "So, you gonna fly home to Washington as soon as we hit Peterson? Or are we gonna squeeze in a couple of hours in a sleazy motel for some just-like-old-times fucking? I'm thinking not; thinking this time you're gonna stalk off with a pained expression and go back to bending over only for duty once again."

"Ouch," Jack says, leaning toward the still figure on the bed. "You sure you're not still a Prior? That was extra pissy, even for you. And good job with the mind reading, by the way. You sure Merlin's really gone?"

There is a pause.

"I don't know if I can keep doing this, Jack," Daniel says, in a very different voice. "Maybe it should be a clean break this time."

"Ha ha," Jack shoots back.

"I know, I know. Those clean breaks we vow, they go so well.... they last so long."

"Not."

"I just... I just.... You know, I'm glad you're here but it's ripping my heart out at the same time." Daniel puts a hand over his face. "I'm not at my best right now. You should stop listening. Or better yet, leave the room before I say something really embarrassing."

"Or I could go first," Jack says, and he leans up to grab the room control from next to Daniel's head and kills the lights completely. Then he scoots hastily right up next to Daniel, his chair legs a screech on the bulkhead, making Daniel start. He puts his mouth to Daniel's ear. His whisper is harsh and reluctant.

"I love you, you reckless arrogant son of a bitch. That hasn't changed. When Carter had the team, watching you go on missions without me was breaking my heart and scaring the crap out of me and making me jealous and regretful, and that was bad enough, lemme tell you, but the last year and a half has been an order of magnitude worse. I don't have a good answer for fixing it, but I'm not goddamn breaking up with you again. That doesn't work for me anymore. Fuck that. And breaking up -- it sounds so teen-age anyway."

He presses his lips to Daniel's temple, right next to his ear. Daniel's hand gropes up, cups the side of Jack's face. It is trembling.

"I can't do this right now," Daniel says. His voice is about to break.

Jack says out loud, "I know. Sleep now. I'll be right here."

Instinct makes Jack take Daniel's hand and not let go of it, as he leans back in the uncomfortable chair, scooting it a couple of inches further away from the bed, and closes his eyes. He won't sleep, but maybe Daniel can.

end


End file.
